ce of
soap, supportin' her on his saddle, another man leading the mare, dead
lame and the Corporal's hairy. Plugged in the upper works, the Corporal,
poor beggar! but he'd managed to stick on somehow until they got to the
Hospital. Have you ever had to deal with a woman in hysterics?"

Beauvayse nods sagely.

"Once or twice."

"Once is an experience that lasts a man all his lifetime. Phew!" Captain
Bingo mops his large pink face. "Never had such a dressing-down in my
life."

"But what had you to do with the Corporal getting chipped?"

"The Lord only knows!" says Bingo piously. "But, if you'd heard her, all
the rest of the day and half through the night!..."

"I did," Beauvayse says with a faint grin. "Mine's the next bedroom to
yours, you know."

"'Oh, the blood! Oh, the blood!' ..." Not unsuccessfully does the spouse
of Lady Hannah attempt to render the recurrent hiccough and the whooping
screech of hysteria. "'Damn it, my dear!' I said, tryin' to reason with
her, 'what else did you expect the fellow had got in him? Sawdust?' That
seemed to rouse her like nothing else.... Turned on me like a tigress, by
the living Tinker!--called me everything she could lay her tongue to, and
threatened that she'd apply for a separation if I continued to outrage
every feeling of decency that association with such a thundering brute
hadn't uprooted from her nature."

"Whe--ew!"

Beauvayse's comment is a shrill-toned whistle.

"Of course, her nerves were knocked to smithereens, and a man can overlook
a lot, under the circumstances. She was a mere jelly when the bombardment
began----" goes on rueful Captain Bingo.

"--Rather!" confirms Beauvayse.--"Lived in the hotel cellar for the first
fortnight, only emergin' from among the beer-barrels and wine-casks and
liqueur-cases after dark----"

"--To blow me up and forgive me, turn and turn about, until daylight did
appear. Luckily," reflects Bingo, with a rather dreary chuckle, "I had
plenty of night-duty on just then, and so escaped a lot."

"_That_ gave her her chance to shoot the moon!" hints Beauvayse, in
accents muffled by his long tumbler.

"By the Living Tinker!" asseverates Captain Bingo, jerked out of his
reclining attitude by vigorous utterance of the expletive, "you could have
bowled me over with a scent-squirter when I came back to brekker and found
her gone, and a cocked-hat note of farewell left for me on the
dressing-table pincushion, in regular elopement style